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There are many places in Hungary where in the past narrow gauge railroads were operating, a lot of these today are just memories leaving behind just a few pieces of rails here and there embedded in asphalt, and the use of parts in fences and buildings. There are however a few which closed down more recently, and so the tracks are still mostly intact. One of these are the 760mm gauge industrial tracks of the hemp rope factory of Szegvár, measuring about 10 kilometres total length and lots of turnouts for an interesting layout to serve the factory. In August I was there helping in the work of keeping it in operational order, and in the 20th August (Hungary's national celebration) in the passenger operation.

It's the 20th August, the day for the official passenger service! (But well, we did some the day before as well, long into the dusk). So let's start it strong, both the engines connected in tandem, and all the six passenger carriages! Or at least we would have liked to. The red engine decided to not cooperate, and stuck in reverse!

The tracks were originally built to serve the hemp rope factory of Szegvár which slowly decayed and eventually closed down in the past ten years, it's production (whatever was left of it) was moved somewhere near Szeged. I was lucky to see some of the machines in operation last year. A short detour: why on the Earth would one still produce ropes of hemp in the age of synthetics? The most important advantage of these is that they don't gather static electricity like nylon, so can be used in environments where that's a disadvantage (like near explosives). These ropes are also told to be still used on sailing ships.

Relics from before the system change. "Excellent firm", "Production competition, 1st place". This place was the workers' dining room, now just us on the camp slept there. I even found a few things we left there last year, proving that just about nothing happens here any more. On the tables there are various decaying photographies from the factory's life.

The factory did not just produce the rope, it grew the hemp in place. The narrow gauge tracks primarily served exactly for this: many run across the fields where hemp was grown primarily to collect it, and bring in the processing facilities. An important part of the process was soaking the hemp, for this the factory relied on the widely available thermal water of our country. Why thermal water? In the past the continuous high volume production was a priority, so the work had to start on the fifteenth March even if the weather was like the hell would freeze over. So they took the advantage of our underground resource, and let the warm thermal water come up to make this a possibility. The wells were so-called positive, that is, the water comes up on it's own, so this way even today there are filled pools of this warm water in the factory area.

These days after the factory ceased to be, everything is just rusting there. Old buildings, some old equipment, only a guard and a shepherd are there where once many people worked from dawn till dusk and dusk till dawn. All would certainly just rot away or would be collected for the price of raw materials (this is a common fate of abandoned rail roads here: many are torn up sometimes illegally for the price of the metal as there is no proper control on junk metal trade) if it weren't for those people who care.

It started sometime three or so years ago when local rail lovers noticed the situation there. Ever since then they were trying to negotiate with the local authorities and the owner of the factory to keep this piece of the past in functional order to make it possible to give the trains a go. First the tracks were transferred to local property as an industrial heritage, and recently a somewhat permanent permission was acquired for passenger service on them.

But that's only a part of the story. Bureaucracy is a though stuff, but even meanwhile without anything happening on the field, ageing is at work. In the past three years there was passenger service around every 20th of August with considerable interest (sometimes the available engines and carriages just weren't enough to serve the needs), but even with this little, the thin tracks are literally rotting away, and occasionally even some thefts happen. To make the passenger operation safe, some serious work has to be done.

So far every year before 20th August there was a week of construction camp for these works. This was where I went to help, and that's how these photos were made in some spare times (see how good is to just linger around with a camera while the party is at work in 35 degrees Celsius? :D).

It is hard, but also interesting to work out there. It would be just too easy to simply go out with a set of concrete sleepers and chunks of replacement rails to fix up some problems. First, of course the problems themselves have to be identified: on such a small rail road where nothing goes above like ten kilometres per hour, these are different. Track is not straight and wobbles around like a drunken snake? Absolutely no problem as long as the gauge is between at about 750 - 780 millimetres and the rails are held firmly! The real problem is once when the wooden sleepers (or at least the place where they were...) rot out or the wood fillings of some concrete sleepers decay and let the rail loose. Even the slowest train will derail there falling between the rails no longer held in place. Most of the work involves fixing up these. The worse situation is when the metal itself rots apart which for the light construction and old materials is unpleasantly common in some sections.

Fastening the tracks. We had to remove a badly deformed rail here, it is unknown whether it was for theft attempt, or ageing, the hot weather and the lack of grip on the non-existent sleepers took it's toll on this section. But to the evening we could take the train around! (also fixing some other sections, of course)

That's good though that we have some replacement materials, although it is also work to extract those. Find some usable sleepers (which didn't already broke apart) from a pile of junk, pickaxe some smaller track utilities (screws, rail fastening pieces, fishplates) out of the ground from around there, sort these out, throw all on the work train, and let's go. Weird, but fun.

A typical work train, now going home. We are sitting on a passenger carriage here, in front of us there is the generator to supply electricity for the drill, several tools: shovels, pickaxes, wrenches and whatever else we need, and of course some rail equipment, here a prepared concrete sleeper and several rails which rot through, and were cut out of the track during the day for replacements.

The small engines by the way are not the property of the factory: here there weren't any remaining (they pulled around the carriages with tractors before). Strange, but yes, one of those who come here every summer working on this rail system has a nice assortment of narrow gauge stuff in his backyard like more than a hundred meters of tracks laid down, and also some such engines! So that's him who lends these for the service - more on them may be found on their site.

And well, for some final words of this article, it is definitely good to see there are people in this country who care, and hope the best for this little rail operation! Hopefully they will be up and running next summer too, and yes, if it will be so, I definitely hope I will be there for some useful work! :)

"Go slow!", well, it that ten kilometres per hour normal speed was too much. This was the only "slow" signal on the track this time, we just didn't have time to replace the rails here too, as it would have been necessary. That's a job for next time! Anyway the passenger service was going well, in day it was a bit low for the near forty degrees Celsius (which also took it's toll a bit on the engines needing a lot of cooling water), but in the evening it really spun off! (On the 20th truly I didn't see it since I had to leave with this train at three afternoon as next day it was work for me)

Referred artworks

"Go slow!", well, it that ten kilometres per hour normal speed was too much. This was the only "slow" signal on the track this time, we just didn't have time to replace the rails here too, as it would have been necessary. That's a job for next time! Anyway the passenger service was going well, in day it was a bit low for the near forty degrees Celsius (which also took it's toll a bit on the engines needing a lot of cooling water), but in the evening it really spun off! (On the 20th truly I didn't see it since I had to leave with this train at three afternoon as next day it was work for me)

A typical work train, now going home. We are sitting on a passenger carriage here, in front of us there is the generator to supply electricity for the drill, several tools: shovels, pickaxes, wrenches and whatever else we need, and of course some rail equipment, here a prepared concrete sleeper and several rails which rot through, and were cut out of the track during the day for replacements.

It's the 20th August, the day for the official passenger service! (But well, we did some the day before as well, long into the dusk). So let's start it strong, both the engines connected in tandem, and all the six passenger carriages! Or at least we would have liked to. The red engine decided to not cooperate, and stuck in reverse!

Fastening the tracks. We had to remove a badly deformed rail here, it is unknown whether it was for theft attempt, or ageing, the hot weather and the lack of grip on the non-existent sleepers took it's toll on this section. But to the evening we could take the train around! (also fixing some other sections, of course)

Relics from before the system change. "Excellent firm", "Production competition, 1st place". This place was the workers' dining room, now just us on the camp slept there. I even found a few things we left there last year, proving that just about nothing happens here any more. On the tables there are various decaying photographies from the factory's life.

This large digital image was drawn for more than two months until it was completed (Or better to say I thought there is no much to do with it any more). It is one of my better pieces although it suffers some coloring problems. The theme would be an abandoned city on Earth, with cheetaans wandering around seeking for the sunshine. This is a part of the "original" cheetaan story, that is the story of the first interstellar war between human and cheetaan.

EL-9 battery powered electrical mine engine in Kemence, Börzsöny. This engine is mostly used for track maintenance due to it's slower speed, but might come useful in passenger service if the upper parts of the track will ever be re-opened, for it's environmentally friendly operation. It runs very silently compared to just about any of the others!

Flight of a Dragon is a retro game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!

Just having some fun with doodling. A Shiriat riding a Cyat, racing with a train. The species are from the Cheetaan Legacy universe. So I finally decided to stop being such a scrooge I am, and embarked on an adventure to get myself a digitizing pad.

Pencil sketch on some A/5 leaf. Well, this is really on "some" A/5 leaf, although this is not as bad as some other such old pieces of mine. This was just on some thin paper with a triangle grid on it's back which would show through no matter what arcane thing you do with your scanner.

Parallel lines meeting in the distance, some tracks of the Szegvár narrow gauge industrial rail system. It might also feel an eternity to pass it even with the train, however it certainly has a quite unique feel.

Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus reconstruction (at least an attempt at it), as of 2015 knowledge: the Ibrahim et al. papers from 2014 and the later adjustments on the hindlimb size, discarding the quadrupedal stance. Fleshed out according to some own ideas as well as various existing knowledge on the animal.

In the summer, as in the previous years, I visited two narrow gauge railways for some voluntary work. One is the industrial railway of Szegvár of which I already have an older article here, the other which I started visiting in last summer is Kemence in Börzsöny. Thanks to the frequent rains the country was very nice this year, even though it gave us quite a mess to clean up at Szegvár.

The 15th March is special in Hungary, we would be celebrating the anniversary of an important uprising, one against the Hapsburg dynasty demanding more autonomy for our country within their empire. It was the pinnacle of the age of reformation, but one which later got usurped like all the other movements happening in that year. Then, today... It seems like people here lost all their sanity siding with an oppressive government and very few caring of any movement which tries any reformation.

Passenger service on 20th August, 2014, on the industrial tracks of Szegvár. Usually two such little engines would be in service with three carriages each, however this year one of those malfunctioned. To serve the demands so the other had to pull five - and they were usually full except for this round.

The summer started with a beautiful passing storm at sunset at my location, a rare and amazing sight. As I realized what was going on, I rushed out quickly grabbing my old Olympus C2500L camera to witness and photograph this phenomenon...

An image from (or for) the planned game Cheetaan Legacy, portraying one of the races (Shiriat / Cyat) at one of their typical environments. The image itself is not bad, but a little sloppy. For one it is that for a comment from a friend I started to study a little more how railway equipment looks from different angles, and I got the bogies wrong, just too flat. The other part is that probably I could do much better now at the portraits. So this is rather just an experiment which in this form will never make into the game (If ever).

Twenty-six forty-eight... Space is opened wide, our ships reach towards planets of distant solar systems, man is colonizing near and far. The same time Earth is struggling by overpopulation, severe social, political and economic problems. Many who can afford, embark on the journey, a perilous journey towards the unknown... A sci-fi novel set in the distant future, telling the story of a young man, who tries to find his place in this strange new world (currently Hungarian only).

Tanis exploring some burnt down ruins. They could be Tikireni and Xitka from New World 2648, blue eyes for a Xi are not common. The Xi is the dark wolf-like creature, the Nir is the cheetah. The background is an own photograph, taken of a small burnt-down and abandoned summerhouse.

Flight of a Dragon is a retro style game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Now the game is complete so you can finally lead the dragon to his salvation! Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!